Web-Lisp? Oh no!

[Paul Prescod]

Henry G. Baker wrote:
> Moon hacked up a simple Lisp-based TeX-equivalent around 1979-80 time
> frame.  I think that some of the earliest SMBX docs were written in
> it.  It ran in Maclisp on the SMBX Foonly (pdp10 emulator).  It was
> slow as sh*t, because it ran completely interpreted (I think), and it
> was running on a really slow machine.  I don't know what happened to
> that program, or even what it was called.

Now there is an international standard for structured document
formatting that is very Scheme-like: DSSSL. There is a very fast, nice
implementation in C++, and others are being written on top of R4RS
Scheme. I would strongly suggest that DSSSL be used for all
documentation, not only because it is Scheme-based, but because it is
Just Plain a Good Idea. TeX was created in a different era as a
typesetting system. It's still a good typesetting system, but pretty
poor as a general document format. Like C or assembly, it is something
you compile to, not something you trap your source in.

 Paul Prescod